The following essay is based on a short presentation I gave Saturday at Monkeywrench Books in Austin, Texas as part of “Imagining Revolutionary Media,” a discussion hosted by Solidarity Circuit and Peaceful Streets Project.

I wanted to talk today about the challenges of being a new media journalist today, and I’ve got three major points and a couple challenges we face that I plan to touch on.

We all agree that old media is dying, that’s part of why we’re here. It’s also oppressing people on the way out by throwing a temper tantrum as it dies, and it’s hurting everybody — especially those of us who want to be journalists in a sustainable career, and for anyone who wants to reach people.

But new media kind of looks like a sweat shop! On July 1, Digiday published a study on the volume of publishing in modern online media. According to their figures, Huffington Post has 532 full time staff churning out 1,200 articles per day, with an additional 400 unpaid blog posts generated daily. Buzzfeed, the biggest “success story” of modern, list-based journalism meanwhile has 100 paid staff members producing over 350 pieces of content daily.

In the current climate of political Russophobia, the American government just can’t stop talking about RT News (Russia Today). Secretary of State John Kerry has blasted it as a “propaganda bullhorn.”

The Chair of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors labelled it beside Boko Haram and ISIS and now Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has called it a broadcaster of “untruths … with a tiny, tiny viewership.”

The obvious question to ask is, why do they insist on talking about RT if it really is all the things they call it? The answer is just as obvious. It is because they understand that RT is the opposite of all of these things, and people are beginning to find out.

Law is meant to protect the inalienable rights of people. But the Patriot Act acts. It does not protect human rights. It is not real patriotism. It imposes the will of institutional government upon people, at the expense of the rights inherent to our humanity.

The First Amendment in the United States’ Bill of Rights is the original patriot act. The First Amendment is the formula for true patriotism; a prescription to non-violently oppose monopolistic isms, and isms of all sorts. It is the way in which change is conducted without hostile confrontation. In this way, the First Amendment is the very definition of patriotism.

There are five distinct parts to the First Amendment. These five distinctions spell out five separate rights of freedom, and five stages essential to patriotic action: think, seek, speak, stop, act.